An appraisal of the evolution of strategic conditions over the last two years and a careful winnowing of recent "straws in the wind" suggest that each superpower is preparing for a "grand negotiation" along the lines of 1972 which produced SALT I and détente. The Reagan administration, presumably including the president himself, believes, like the Nixon administration a decade and a half ago, that the Soviet Union can be bought and transformed Pygmalion-like from a contentious to a contented superpower, persuaded to abandon its Promethean struggle with the United States. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, faces increasingly difficult domestic conditions, in part because of the dramatic change in the global economic situation and the American resurgence in strategic military power. Moscow hopes that improved superpower relations will achieve the same braking effect upon American military power and access to Western wealth and technology that they did during the Nixon period.
This essay will explore the Soviet political, economic, and military slowdown that has become evident over the past two years, the resurgence of American power, the possible outlines of the grand negotiation under way, and, finally, will weigh the benefits and dangers inherent in a DÉTENTE II-SALT III arrangement.
A Stagnant Russia In Systemic Crisis
In retrospect, mid-1984 was the crisis point in Soviet strategy. By then it had become apparent to Soviet leaders that even though Moscow had achieved a strategic weapons advantage of sorts over the United States its political value was questionable. The Soviet Union was involved in unproductive proxy ventures on three continents - in Nicaragua, Angola, and Vietnam (Cambodia), to name the most prominent - and mired in a debilitatingly unsuccessful attempt to subdue neighboring Afghanistan by outright invasion. The high cost of overextended commitments became increasingly painful as the Soviet Union suffered the consequences of protracted agricultural deterioration at home and plummeting oil prices abroad. Finally, compounding domestic difficulties, the United States began to make dramatic improvements in offensive and defensive strategic weaponry as well as in conventional forces, promising to erode whatever political potential inhered in Moscow's military strength and to deny the Soviet Union an opportunity to exert leverage in the most important geopolitical crises in decades, in Iran.
From early 1986, in an effort to find a way out of the impending "scissors" of American resurgence and Soviet stagnation, new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev began attempts to right the domestic economy and, while stepping up the chant of "peace," put forward new proposals for arms control and improved economic relations with the United States, suggesting that the new leadership had decided upon a fundamental change in policy.
Some twenty years ago Gorbachev's predecessors decided that a quantum leap in Soviet military power was necessary to compete globally with the United States. Key assumptions underlay the decision: First, that strategic superiority was attainable and politically usable; second, that its cost was bearable; and third, that development along the single dimension of military power at the expense of the rest of a society would not be harmful or dangerous to the regime. Unfortunately for the Soviet people, even while achieving a strong military position, a combination of circumstances
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